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As the midterm election year takes off, the field of Democratic candidates has grown to seven in the 7th Congressional District, adding a striking dynamic to a race where the winner will face freshman Republican Ryan Mackenzie in November.
Five candidates – Bob Brooks, a retired firefighter and state union president; Ryan Crosswell, a former federal prosecutor; Carol Derstine-Obando, a former aide to then U.S. Sen Bob Casey Jr.; Lamont McClure, a former Northampton County executive, and Mark Pinsley, Lehigh County’s controller – had campaign announcements on the books by the fall.
Then, in early January, two other candidates emerged – Aiden Gonzalez, the 27-year-old vice president of the newly reformed Lehigh Valley Young Democrats, and Lewis Shupe, a self-described “renegade Democrat” from Allentown.
It’s not unusual to see multiple candidates vying for a nomination in a primary.
Democrat Susan Wild, who was defeated by Mackenzie in a run for a fourth term in Congress in 2024, faced five opponents when she won the primary in 2018, the year she was first elected.
Republican incumbent Charlie Dent opened a door to Democrats that year when he announced he was not seeking reelection after 13 years in office.
2018 was also President Donald Trump’s first midterm election. Historically, the party controlling the White House has lost ground in Congress when the president’s popularity has waned. Democrats took control of the House with a net gain of 40 seats.
The May 19 primary is taking place under a similar scenario with Wild’s loss creating a chance for a new Democrat to be elected in the 7th and Trump’s approval ratings in the low 40s.
Democrats think they can do a repeat of 2018, seeing Mackenzie as vulnerable because he defeated Wild by 1%, one of the slimmest House win margins that year.
Sam Chen, a Republican strategist and founder of the Lehigh Valley-based Liddell Group, said the Democratic contenders have their work cut out for them.
“It is the most exciting and toughest place to run a campaign, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat,” said Chen.
“The voters here split their tickets. That makes it really tricky because you really have to earn their vote.”
Crafting a message
The 7th covers Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton counties and a sliver of Monroe County.
Democrats hold a slight registration edge with 41% of the voters versus 38% for Republicans. Another 20% are mostly unaffiliated with a small number belonging to third parties.
“So it’s crafting that narrative. It’s knowing your district inside and out enough to know what you’re going to say to whom and then to do it in those incremental bits,” Chen said.
He learned this when he was Republican Kevin Dellicker’s campaign manager for his unsuccessful primary runs in the 7th in 2022 and 2024.
Brit Crampsie, owner of an eponymously named communications company specializing in advocacy groups, said candidates need a seasoned campaign team behind them.
“You’re going to rely on the messages that come out of your campaign, that external communication, things like your mailers, your digital ads, your website, your TV commercials, those are the things that reach more people than you will be able to individually,” she said.
With a crowded race, Chen said messaging can be tricky.
“Negative campaigning gets a lot harder. Candidates have limited funds and bandwidth and going negative on [all] candidates will be hard and, likely, unwise. Look for candidates to sell themselves instead of criticizing each other,” he said.
“To stand out in such a crowded field, candidates need to build coalitions and find a vein to run in – which candidates are progressive, which ones are moderate, who’s the ‘outsider’ candidate, who pulls the veterans or the educators or the labor unions, etc.”
Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, said having a candidate zero in on a faction of voters can end up hurting party outcomes. He said the winner in multicandidate races doesn’t need 50% of the vote but can land on the top of the ballot with a plurality. For example, Wild won in 2018 with 33.5% of the vote.
“The problem with crowded primaries for the political party is that they can produce candidates that aren’t well suited for a general election,” Borick said.
As an example, Borick cited the 2022 gubernatorial race where state Sen. Doug Mastriano won the eight-candidate Republican primary with 43.8% of the vote by appealing to the party’s populist base.
“But when matching up against a more moderate Democrat in the form of Josh Shapiro in the General Election, he was trounced, appearing too extreme for a broader electorate,” Borick said.
Borick said Shapiro’s endorsement of Brooks likely reflects worries that an unelectable candidate will win the primary and that the governor’s imprimatur will sway voters to vote for him.
Still a lot of unknowns
With the 7th’s reputation as a swing district, the seven Democrats are running under a national lens.
“It’s going to be one of the most closely watched and best funded races in the entire country,” said Crampsie whose experience in campaigns includes being a field worker in 2010 for then Democratic Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan’s unsuccessful run against Dent.
“The balance of Congress essentially hinges on this seat and a couple of others in Pennsylvania,” Crampsie said.
The other must-win House seats for both parties are the 1st in Bucks and part of Montgomery counties, held by Republican Brian Fitzpatrick; the 8th in the state’s Northeast, held by Republican Rob Bresnahan; and the 10th in Central Pennsylvania, held by Republican Scott Perry.
The next two months will tell a lot where the primary race is headed.
The deadline for filing the 2025 campaign finance report is Feb. 2, giving a good idea on where support is picking up or slipping. For the first nine months of 2025, the Democrats raised a combined $1.87 million, an amount that nearly matches Mackenzie’s $1.92 million.
In 2024, the 7th District race clocked in at $37 million, the most expensive House campaign in Pennsylvania.
Starting Feb. 17, the candidates will have until March 10 to collect 1,000 signatures from voters in the 7th to get on the Democratic ballot – no easy task with seven candidates in the running.
Chen noted that voters can only sign one nomination petition in the race, meaning candidates will collectively have to get 7,000 valid signatures.
“One thing to watch is whether all the candidates are able to make the ballot, especially those without a campaign infrastructure in place,” Chen said.
Candidates with strong campaign teams will be skilled in getting valid signatures. They also will be going over petitions line by line looking for ways to legally challenge them to keep opponents off the ballot.
Given the fundraising needs and nomination petition process, Crampsie said, “I think that by the time we get to the primary, I don’t know if all of these people are going to be on the ballot.”
Whoever lands on top, she said, party members will coalesce around the May 19 winner.
“They will support whoever the winner of the primary is. The number one goal is to beat Ryan Mackenzie,” Crampsie said.